


The Shining City

by Remember When (scribblemyname)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Worldbuilding, Zaofu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 11:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18119462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/Remember%20When
Summary: The first time Kuvira sees it, she's gaping at the wonder of it all. The city is soclean, not at all like the healthy coating of dust Earth Kingdom citizens all grow used to so quickly. There are paved streets and automatic lights and whirring technologically defended gates, in addition to the more familiar sight of guardsmen. She'd heard Zaofu was one of the modern wonders of the world, but now she believes it.





	The Shining City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [engmaresh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/gifts).



The shining city. It's beautiful, Zaofu, paid for by Beifong family money, the land bought and a city carved and sculpted across its surface, the inventions and connections and resources of Republic City joining the strength and industry and raw materials of Earth.

The first time Kuvira sees it, she's gaping at the wonder of it all. The city is so _clean_ , not at all like the healthy coating of dust Earth Kingdom citizens all grow used to so quickly. There are paved streets and automatic lights and whirring technologically defended gates, in addition to the more familiar sight of guardsmen. She'd heard Zaofu was one of the modern wonders of the world, but now she believes it.

The Earth Kingdom has always been made up states and cities operating under the rule of whoever could command authority, all of which pay taxes and conscripts to the Earth Queen for the protection of the Kingdom. Here, it is the Beifong name that commands authority, and the glow of artistic beauty—generally the privilege of the wealthy not caught in a struggle to survive—that draws talent and skill from all over the Kingdom, and the power of a new form of bending and a school to teach it that draws earthbenders to rival the Dai Li. The Bao An Dui is neither protection for cultural artifacts nor an indentured army required to resort to banditry when not forcefully employed by Queen or warlord. The guards smile as they offer safety and guidance to the new arrivals into the city.

"These are the refugees?" asks the woman sweeping into the courtyard.

Kuvira stiffens and stops looking around to focus on the voice of one with authority. This is a test. To become a citizen of a city is to bow one's head to the laws of that city and to whoever is its leader, by whatever title they claim.

Suyin Beifong smiles warmly over the small band of ragged children. "I'm the matriarch," she explains simply. She has family with her, a tall man with a kind smile and a look of intelligence and a scrawny little boy, lingering near her side.

Kuvira bows but she doesn't do it right, and the little boy by his father stifles a laugh.

"Junior," the matriarch chides him.

He stops laughing.

She smiles warmly at Kuvira and says, "If you want, you're now members of the Metal Clan. Welcome to the family."

None of the orphans object, least of all Kuvira.

* * *

Kuvira is one of the rare earthbenders that takes to metalbending like a fish to water, but she finds herself lingering after the lessons Suyin gives all the young earthbenders to practice the steps she's watched the dancers use. There's something about each motion in the body that seems to mean more, do more, and then she takes in a sharp breath and stills.

"Don't stop," Suyin tells her, waving a hand for her to continue. "It's lovely."

Kuvira is nervous to continue, but she does because she was told to, and Suyin is studying her with a critical eye, much like the one she uses in classes. A thoughtful hum, then the matriarch is there at her elbow, pressing a guiding hand on arm, then leg, then torso.

"Like this," she says. "This is where the power is. It's very much like bending."

In a way, it is bending. The power of earth seems to surge upward through her being, and she listens to the way it feels the impact of each new stance and step.

"You're very talented," Suyin says with a smile.

Kuvira feels warm all the way through.

* * *

It's art. Suyin Beifong adores art, so her city does as well. Her husband designed the entire city and its petal domes as a sculpture of beauty, not only a wall of safety.

Kuvira studies the domes closing each night, flowers going to sleep, and shudders as she knows there is no way out. She doesn't want a way out. Here is better than where she was before, but where she was before taught her that having a way out feels safer than otherwise.

Opal and Bataar Jr. are the Beifong children that have no bending, and both of them have their own forms of art, Opal with her books and letters and collecting information into the library and Bataar Jr. with his father's penchant for designing and building things. The Metal Clan stamps and paints and hangs its seal on beautiful functional things, things the newcomer Varrick has designed, things the adult residents put together. The entire Earth Kingdom knows that this is the place to come for innovative technology, artistic license and learning, expertise in the newest form of bending, and beautiful, plentiful art.

Kuvira stares sometimes at the newcomers that arrive, watches Suyin personally greet those who wish to stay, and wonders if the Clan is growing too fast. It's exciting and Zaofu is prosperous and Suyin wise. It's probably fine. But it's starting to feel a little less like a large Clan and more like another city where not everybody knows everybody.

At least they still all love many of the same things.

* * *

There is power in art.

* * *

It isn't just very much like bending, Kuvira discovers as she grows older, blossoms under Suyin's tutelage. Suyin turns dancing into more than an artform. She incorporates metal bending and makes the entire art a display of power.

It's not the Beifong name, reaching back generations as a powerful, rich family with the rights to sit in the inner ring and the Queen's court at Ba Sing Se, but the name of the Metal Clan that is beginning to be known in the Earth Kingdom. Suyin's claim to the Beifong name gives her legitimacy, makes her not a threat, as she pays her taxes and the Queen can claim Zaofu as an example of her own reign's splendor.

But the dance troupe carries awe with it when visitors travel to see them, power turned to beauty. The dancers show their skill, and too many earthbenders without the mastery over metal recognize enough of their stances and movements to know how transferable the skill is.

Kuvira flushes with the praise she receives after a dance, both from Suyin and her comrades and from an appreciative audience. She glances around for the best praise, braid whipping behind her, before she finds the scrawny little boy now a scrawny young man smiling shyly in her direction before he pushes up his glasses and disappears.

* * *

"You have skill with that," the captain of the smallest and most important of Zaofu's domes tells Kuvira, gesturing toward the forms she's been practicing for a particularly martial dance.

She's also been practicing hard with all the particularly martial maneuvers Suyin will teach her and she can glean from watching the Bao An Dui's training sessions. She remembers being a little girl in a next to lawless land, where anyone with local authority could scoop up earthbenders or nonbenders alike and press them into service, where in between terms as indentured soldiers, with no skills or money or work, they became bandits for the privilege of survival. She remembers the Earth Kingdom soldiers, conscripted by a higher army with better pay and manners, but pressed and harried by wars or bandits, putting down clashes between the states when there wasn't war at the borders.

The Bao An Dui is something else. They bring order and safety to Zaofu, and everybody knows them, for they are Clan and family. They offer instead of take.

Kuvira flushes with this new praise and bows—properly this time. "Thank you."

The captain just smiles at her. She's getting older herself and was chosen more for her brilliant strategic mind than her strength in metalbending. "Come, surely you've considered applying?"

Kuvira tries to hide her surprise at the forthrightness. But there is power in such blunt honesty as well, in knowing what another has yet to say and saying it, in pointing out the obvious course and forcing them to choose whether they will take it. "Yes," she agrees, voice firm, chin up, confident as her mentor would have chosen to deliver it. "I was going to apply after my next birthday."

There's a minimum age to be a guardsmen, regardlesss of bending skill. It's only reasonable.

The captain nods. "Good. I'm sure Suyin will be pleased."

For once, Kuvira hadn't entirely thought of that, but it settles a soft fluttering in her belly to think it. Suyin is everything Kuvira wants to be someday, and she's been chasing Suyin's pleasure in her accomplishments since she first learned the horse stance in Suyin's courtyard.

* * *

She joins the Bao An Dui. It feels like a Clan, a _family_. They train and laugh together and she knows half the new recruits from her metalbending classes. Suyin still teaches those and the dance troupe in twice weekly groups.

The city has grown beyond Suyin's concept of a family, though she still greets each new visitor and each new resident and decides who will be allowed to stay, but this group of guards and soldiers, metalbending, earthbending, and protecting their own, this feels like the Clan Kuvira had wanted so badly to be a member of as a child.

She learns to guard the gates and the domes, their shining petals bringing a warm feeling of security now instead of that closed in feeling of claustrophobia that she had as a child surrounded by something she couldn't bend. She learns to patrol the streets, to guide the wayward children, to settle pranks and disputes with as little force as possible and larger disturbances with a firm, unmoving enforcement of Suyin's policies and laws but as diplomatic a manner as possible.

Suyin doesn't really want to lose her citizens when their actions turn sour. She wants to rehabilitate them. "Everyone deserves a second chance."

"I'm sure you'll find it in your best interest to tell the truth," Kuvira reminds the youth before her who reportedly stole sweets from a favorite baker. "Then we won't have to call Aiwei and we can simply make proper restitution without much fuss."

She can be firmer. She can apply her own pressure before it gets to Aiwei, and thus Suyin, and thus the massive disappointment of the matriarch, who has the power to decide who is and is not family.

Thankfully, she doesn't have to.

He agrees to serve the man in his shop for a week, to repay the man for the sweets he stole, and eventually chooses to remain there, an apprentice baker. All in all, a happy situation.

* * *

Suyin is pleased, when all is said and done, and recommends to the captain to train Kuvira to lead one day.

The captain snorts and agrees, privately telling Kuvira she doesn't intend to change her training at all. "I always intended to give you a dome one day," she adds conversationally, startling Kuvira as well as she had the first time. "It's prestigious, guarding the uppermost dome. It's where the Beifongs live. But it's small, the family can largely defend themselves, and it'll make Suyin happy if you start there."

In short, it'll look good on her record while the captain still sits as head over all the Bao An Dui of Zaofu. She smiles and her weathered face crinkles. "Don't think I'll hand it to you on a silver platter either. You're going to work for it."

Kuvira smiles back, a flash of sharp teeth. "I'm not afraid to work."

* * *

She works, she trains, she guards, she dances. She saves and rescues and shows up in the papers and gets promoted, and there's the captain's harsh training and grudging respect to balance Suyin's indulgent pleasure, and the attentions of a quiet, bookish engineer who once laughed at her for her first attempt at a proper bow.

It's the shining city, and Kuvira is happy.


End file.
